


Only the Lonely

by StormysHealthyCopingMechanisms



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Aliens, Edge of tomorrow, Yes all of them please
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:46:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23718412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StormysHealthyCopingMechanisms/pseuds/StormysHealthyCopingMechanisms
Summary: It's an Edge of Tomorrow AU. That's pretty much it.It's old but it is here if you're bored and love aliens as much as I do. It's also not finished. Yet. Maybe.
Kudos: 13





	Only the Lonely

There were some things Ronan Lynch had never expected to happen, and waking up handcuffed in Heathrow’s barracks the day before the end of the world was one of them.

It was the farm, of course. One of the last few productive strips of country the UDF hadn’t already claimed, that wasn’t already stripped of fertility and value and wrecked beyond repair. They’d finally come to take it, and there hadn’t been any semblance of a negotiation before Ronan had been conscripted with a taser.

He would only have argued out of spite, anyway. The legal power of the United Defence Forces was inescapable. Declan and Matthew were safely vaulted up wherever Declan had managed to burrow himself into power. And the battle to decide the fate of the human race was imminent. Ronan had accepted the inevitability of death the minute he’d chosen to stay at the farm instead of abandoning it with his brothers.

He didn’t particularly care. The Mimics signalled doom for the planet as soon as they’d arrived five years earlier, and he’d made the most of the time he’d had. Being sent feet-first into the shithole of the French coast was just a quick, if brutal, finale.

There was a loudspeaker blaring multilingual broadcasts in a loop. Every square metre of ground was crowded with gear, or soldiers, or supplies. Everyone nearby seemed immune to the noise and the claustrophobic lack of breathing room and the atmosphere of volatility, like they were numb to it, or had merely became hollow puppets in the spectacle.

The Sergeant who had hauled Ronan (one of a few stragglers late to the festivities) off the plane was still holding the back of his collar. Not exerting undue force, or even an excess of belligerence, but keeping him static. He didn’t seem overly irritated or impressed by Ronan’s sullen disinterest, resigned insubordination. The man clearly didn’t give a fuck why Ronan was there.

He introduced Ronan to his new squad (J-Squad) by using the grip to propel him forwards into their midst. ‘We got a newcomer from the east. Now, Lynch here has probably never seen a fight in his life, so consider him your baby.’

Ronan, possessed by bitter apathy, rolled his eyes but made no complaint.

The soldiers, haphazardly positioned around their minuscule portion of a converted hangar, eyed him off with varying levels of curiosity and dismissiveness. The nearest, tiny in proportion to Ronan, fixed him with a scornful stare, her eyebrows twitching upwards. A taller woman leaned on the bunk behind her, sweeping him with her gaze and smirking in what could have been approval. A boy with faded pale hair sat on the edge of his mattress, ignoring the interruption entirely in favour of watching sunlight stream through the building’s high windows.

The Sergeant - Shawcross, according to his uniform - was escalating into a lecture. ‘We’ve got ‘em on the ropes, and I expect to see y’all hauling ass to prove it. The moment you hit the ground out there you better be dropping bodies, or you’re worthless to me, this squad, your respective nations, and the species. Combat ready by 0600 tomorrow, or I put you down myself.’

He removed the handcuffs, earning Ronan a few appraising glances, and left, barking commands to a few other divisions as he passed them.

There was supposed to be a chance of success. Ronan knew the propaganda. After years of slaughter, military failure, mass evacuations, and the steady loss of territory… There was Verdun. And the man who had supposedly won the battle for the UDF.

Ronan wasn’t much of a conspiracy theorist, but he’d imagined the story was made up. It didn’t seem possible. No matter what kind of special forces team they’d put together, no matter how powerful they claimed the new armour was, the sudden victory was inexplicable.

So sure… he figured the coastline was gonna be a mess. A bloody mess. A graveyard.

If there was any consolation, Ronan suspected that his death would be quick.

J-Squad was a strange, mismatched band of outliers. Ronan picked up that the glaring woman was known as Blue, for some reason, but the rest were an array of grumbled or grunted names Ronan didn’t listen to or bother to remember. They disregarded his presence, for the most part. He wasn’t a deserter, and he wasn’t interested in making himself a threat. They didn’t have any reason to interact with him at all.

Despite everything - having years to mentally prepare himself for a death by alien invasion - he still didn’t sleep. Most of the squad didn’t.

There was an unruffled soldier by the name of Cheng who was tasked with strapping Ronan into his armour the following morning. The plates sat unresponsive and heavy, framed in ribs and spines of metal, strung up in rows lining the insides of huge warehouses. J-Squad was a fraction, a tiny element, and the sound of thousand of humans pulling on armour was deafening.

‘Have you ever worn mechanised armour before?’ Cheng’s question was offhand, like he was discussing what Ronan usually ate for breakfast.

Ronan shrugged, feeling the one armband he was wearing hiss and rotate, rendered silent by the discomfort of the sensation.

‘No? It’s very straightforward.’ Cheng smiled at him patiently.

The tall woman shoved him out of the way. ‘Suit up, HC.’ She pulled across the other armband, shoved Ronan’s arm inside and locked it shut. ‘Pull the trigger, shoot the enemy. Simple, Lynch.’

She flashed her teeth in a sharp grin. His chest plates slammed shut, surprising him, stealing his breath.

Cheng climbed into his own suit, sparing Ronan an apologetic look. The pale kid was already shifting about, thick metal boots thudding into the concrete underfoot with unnerving force. The small woman was ready too, her armour streaked with colours and scribbled words. Someone’s firearm - his own, he realised abruptly - was reporting a full cartridge. It was time.

Tens of thousands of soldiers, all in armour, moving in lines and troop formations across the surface of the airstrip, had an almost surreal effect on his nerves. The armour didn’t help, the sound of thousands of synchronised footsteps, just a beat above walking pace, rotors whirring in arm and leg motion, helicopters thundering. Entire squadrons had already taken off, and a hundred more lay waiting.

They wore the armour into the choppers, and were strung back up, hooked onto racks and launch lines. Ronan’s head swam, slightly, just at the thought of it. He’d seen the footage. He knew what happened when they reached the front. His stomach clenched, instinctively, as the loading ramp swung upwards.

The flight was choppy, noisy, cramped. The armour was suffocating, especially with his movement restricted by the rack. There was weaponry on his forearms, missile launchers on his back. Other soldiers in the squad were carrying pistols, grenades, blades. Ronan didn’t even know how to use his primary guns.

 _It didn’t matter_ , he reminded himself. _This wasn’t going to last long_.

Shawcross, further up the aircraft, shouted something, as the chopper pitched. The floor split open, revealing a blurry, impossible storm of air and sand and ocean. Ronan resisted the urge to clutch for stability as his suit dangled over the gap. Resisted the desperate desire to cling to something and climb. To escape. Survive.

Then the front of the aircraft exploded.

People - soldiers? - were screaming. Ronan pressed his eyes closed, stomach lurching with the chopper, face and hands stinging with heat and changing air pressure. Someone was yelling ‘Drop! Drop!’ and he didn’t know how. Couldn’t move his fingers. Was paralysed by a poisonous combination of fear and bewilderment. He forced his eyes open.

Soldiers, armour, he could see one second, had vanished by the next. The world was a wall of noise and heat and wind. Something struck him, and he felt the rack launch him in an unspeakable jerking motion that sent his stomach up into his throat. He was falling, swinging wildly beneath the spiralling helicopter, in a wide uncontrolled arc. The launch line was attached to the back of his suit, still, unreachable, and there was nothing to stabilise with. The world spun round him, including other suits, other people, fire, bodiless lines.

He hit the bottom reach of his rope, bruising with the jolt, dizzily watching the indeterminate sand/sea/sky approaching him. Something snapped, and he dropped further, landing on his hands and knees, sinking into soft sand, catching a face full of salt water.

It must have been minutes, maybe less, and Ronan had never felt so off balance, outside of himself, beyond reality. He needed to throw up. He needed to run.

It took so much effort to stand, forcing the mechanics into motion. Eyes open, limbs moving with difficulty, at first, and strange amounts of power as the batteries kicked in. Metal was falling from the sky, slamming into the sea. There were streaks of flame attached to nothing, and smoke trails crossing the heavens along with the scream of missiles. He ran, baffled by the weight around his limbs. The computer tapped into the SMG against his sleeve was shouting noises about ammunition and safety. Briefly, he didn’t remember what he was supposed to be shooting at, where he was, how he’d gotten here.

He kept running until he’d cleared the ocean water, and vaguely, somehow, registered that the beach was dotted with craters, the crashed wrecks of helicopters, and bodies.

There was a familiar face in his periphery. Blue. She was firing her weapon, but Ronan could only see sand flying where it was pointed. He wanted to speak - ask for help - but staggering out of the path of gunfire was the extent of his capacity.

A metal-fingered hand caught his shoulder, barely managing to guide him through sheer lack of coordination, but a moment later Ronan had stumbled over the crest of a crater and into the centre. The pale kid was the one who had caught him. There was a ribbon of blood across his face, and his focus was fixed on the horizon, at the cloud of sand and dust in the sky. Ronan gasped, noiselessly, shocked by how difficult it was to breathe.

Blue hurdled the crest, landed in the ditch next to them, and someone else rolled in from the other direction.

‘What happened?’ A voice, unrecognisable from strain and unfamiliarity. ‘We were supposed to be taking them by surprise!’

Ronan slumped on the crumbling, damp slope, wondering if he could will himself to death, if he could choose to just quit. Other voices responded to the first, but the only thing he was aware of was a flurry of movement in the sand at the bottom of the crater.

Like most civilians, he’d never seen a mimic in anything other than blurry footage of metallic limbs. They moved fast, that much was obvious, but he hadn’t, would never have been able to grasp the speed and violence of the reality. Even as the sand was churned up and silver-black… flesh? broke the surface, stabbed into footings, leveraged the rest of the body out. Ronan could hear it, an almost static noise, the crackle of electricity, even over the burst of gunfire as one or several of the other soldiers targeted it. It screeched, taking bullets, limbs flying (too fast and too many to count). It was impossible to tell where the noise came from, how the God awful thing even _existed_.

They destroyed it, rippling patterns of flesh finally slowing, splintering apart into segments of hardened metal rock. Armour moved around Ronan, clambering up the side of the crater, advancing towards more of the enemy, and he couldn’t even get himself back upright.

He struggled, pushed at the ground beneath him. Watched more missiles painting the sky, and felt the rumbles of explosions, some close and others distant.

Sand flicked against his face, could have been from anything, but he felt the hum, another vibration. The mimic limbs unearthing themselves in front of him were different. Bigger, lighter, laced with electric blue. Fluctuating. It was slower than the first, hugely unsettling, and hard to look at.

The mimic jerked towards him, rough and jagged and possibly unaware of his presence, potentially about to bypass him entirely, and Ronan pulled the trigger on instinct.

It twisted, and he saw the _eyes_ , scorching pits with a dot of light at the centre. Despite his incapacity to aim, the proximity of the alien (nearly on top of him), _screeching_ , ensured his bullets landed, ripping through something like flesh, shredding its insides.

He felt the explosion, guts and alien goop landing everywhere, and the world burned.

Ronan burned.

And then he woke up.

There was a hand curved around his shoulder. Noise. Shawcross pulling him upright, starting in on about ‘We got a newcomer from the east-’

And that was how it began.

The initial few rounds were confusion, and leftover shock from the first battle. The actual insanity of the situation - Ronan didn’t really question it. Life had always been strange, and they were up against aliens. All bets were off.

Events continued repeating, with so little change that it was almost laughable. Ronan was the only variable, and if that wasn’t the best demonstration of cosmic determination then Ronan didn’t know what could be.

It was surprisingly easy to memorise, too. The same words, same voices, over and over, like Ronan was hearing the same track on repeat. Hard to forget, actually.

He hit the beach so often he learned how to land, pulled the trigger enough that he knew how to compensate for the recoil, figured out who died quickly and who continued the charge, even though he’d never made it much further than a few hundred metres from the shore.

There wasn’t anywhere to go, that was the main problem. Burning beach behind, burning field beyond. Abandoned towns, riddled with alien incumbents. Nightmares.

There was bolting from the operating base. He pulled that off a few times, drank and watched the sunset and the new day arrive. Heard the panic. Heard the first reports come in about the beach he wasn’t on, the front. Heard people begin to sob, and wail, and scream when they recognised the massacre. They hit London a couple nights after, anyway. The rest of the world was destined to follow the slaughter in France, and there was nowhere to hide.

Eventually Ronan started tracking sideways, along the length of the beach. Tried and failed to find a weak spot. Wondered why he bothered.

He wondered most about why. When he’d been so convinced he could accept death, he’d get stuck… unable to die. Unable to escape.

Well, dying was possible. Staying dead was the problem.

He found a downed drop-ship, painted black and half destroyed. Saw the figures that had tried to advance from it, fanning out. Their armour was black, and they were carrying different weapons. The fighting was especially thick here, and it took Ronan a dozen attempts just to get close enough to see the distinctive skull patterns painted on the front of their helmets.

Only when he reached them, fought alongside (his own faltering parody of fighting) them, did he realise who they were.

Paramilitary. Special forces. The victors of the momentous previous battle. And ahead of them, already bleeding from the crash, the Angel of Verdun.

He was dragging a heli-blade, fighting hand-to-hand more than Ronan could fathom. Almost effortlessly, but there wasn’t any triumph in it. Ronan could tell he, like every other person still alive on the beach, knew they weren’t going to win.

And it made him angry, unexpectedly. Angry that the motherfucking Angel of Verdun, the best fighter the UDF could provide against the alien threat, was practically worthless.

 _Practically_ worthless, he had to admit, watching Adam Parrish swing the blade and cleave limbs from mimics.

And then something burst out of the ground beneath him and flung Parrish sideways. Ronan watched him land, other soldiers turning on the mimic, bursts of gunfire. The Angel of Verdun didn’t stand back up. His armour was split through the middle, scorched from a mimic strike.

But Parrish had won the battle of Verdun. His team were the elite. Best of the best. Humanity’s last hope.

If Ronan could warn them. Get their help, somehow, maybe they would have a shot. Maybe the Angel would be able to use Ronan’s experience to gain a tactical advantage.

At this point, Ronan didn’t really have much choice.

He practiced the pattern so he could reach them before the last of the squad had even escaped the crashed ship. Died when a splintering chopper came down and he didn’t move fast enough. Died when he collided with one of the soldiers and took a hit through the chest in her place. Died when he tackled Parrish out of the path of the incoming mimic, and a missile hit them both before Ronan had even managed to say; ‘Wait-’

He ran sooner, struggling to master the awkward mechanics of the suit to move faster. Modified his approach so he was looping around the worst obstacles, and swinging up on Parrish’s far side before he was even clear of the chopper. Died. Ran again. Died. Ran again. Died.

There was the solid thud of metal when Ronan struck him, his momentum throwing them both to the ground.

Ronan was already talking, _shouting_ , when Parrish flipped him sideways. The heli-blade sank into the sand, and Ronan saw Parrish’s teeth as he growled.

‘What-’ He got upright, using the blade for support. ‘- the _hell_?’

Ronan, crouched, launched himself into Parrish’s waist. The surprise only ever took the Angel back a few feet. He knew the armour better than Ronan, and the hilt of his weapon slammed up against Ronan’s shoulder to dislodge his grip, but it provided the opportunity for Ronan fling his arm round and open fire, eviscerating the mimic that erupted behind them.

At this point Parrish would shake off the surprise, start looking for the next target, and Ronan had to drag him forwards, across the smouldering mass, to avoid the missiles falling in. They both stumbled from the explosion, but Parrish swung his gun, reliably blasting another mimic to pieces as it approached.

Ronan pushed himself to keep moving, wishing there was a chance to catch his breath, pulling Parrish when it was possible. It was half a dance, because he never yielded much, but he was always more focused on incoming threats than on what Ronan was trying to do with him. A shuffle to the left, while Parrish was shooting. Forward over the crest of a dune, slipping hard down the other side, while Parrish leaned his weight into a swing onto the mimic they found. Ronan fired over his shoulder, taking out another. Propelled them both against the sand as a low rocket passed overhead.

And Ronan went for an angle down the length of the dune, trying to keep Parrish in step with him, wheezing with the effort. Dragged them to a halt when someone sprinted across their path, fleeing while firing backwards at random.

A mimic came flying overhead, and Ronan shot it down, and this was it… another new frontier. He’d learned never to stop and talk, because stopping was a shortcut back to the beginning, but he didn’t know where to go next, where to go ever, on a single-handed crusade to take down the alien invasion.

But Parrish started resisting, wasn’t letting Ronan pull him forwards. Stopped dead.

‘C’mon.’ Ronan yanked his arm, frustrated and desperate. What the fuck was he doing?

The Angel’s eyes weren’t as blue as they were in the promotional pictures. They were shaded, dark with exhaustion. He was dripping sweat and blood from the wound to his forehead, swaying in the suit with the effort of breathing.

‘Find me.’ His voice was heavy. ‘Find me when you wake up.’

‘What-’ Ronan struggled to think, to answer coherently. ‘Come _on_.’ He punctuated this with another yank, but Parrish was immoveable.

Gloved fingers wrapped around his arm, closing tight enough to warp the metal brace there. ‘Find me when-’

And Ronan felt the ground convulse beneath him, pain engulfing his body.

It had occurred to him to search for the Angel before the beach, but the idea didn’t make sense. He was stuck with J-Squad, the FOB was massive, and even if he was able to get within a hundred yards of Parrish before the battle, no amount of explaining would convince the man he was playing Groundhog Day with an extinction event.

But… Fuck it, he couldn’t think of what else to do, now.

It wasn’t as difficult to find them as he’d expected. It wasn’t hard at all, when special forces had their own barracks. It only took a few questions to find where it was, a few attempts to get over there, and the risk taken in stride. Turned out they weren’t even occupying their bunks, and with a little further investigation Ronan discovered that Parrish’s squad haunted the training decks even further afield of general forces. Even the afternoon before the battle they were already in their armour, black and painted, helmets off and matching suspicious stares as Ronan entered.

He was untidy, in hastily pulled on uniform, poorly laced boots, tangled hair and the dust of hiding while he’d split from J-Squad. He didn’t belong here, amongst people who looked like soldiers, moved like soldiers, watched him like they were already seeing the enemy. He couldn’t pick out the Angel anywhere among them, not even leaned up against the firing range.

Then there was a gap, an empty gateway onto the strip of concrete that served as a training arena, and the spinning, slicing machinery that hung overhead, replicating mimic warfare. Ronan hated it, the coarse echo of the real thing. But there was someone out there, on the far edge of the arena. Low to the ground, out of armour, unmoving.

It had to be him.

Ronan could feel the watchful stare of every other soldier in the room sharpening. He heard them shifting closer, circling him, blocking off alternate routes, and took the narrowing opportunity to stride through the gap, across the red lettered DO NOT CROSS on the floor.

A few metres in and metal whizzed by him, making him flinch involuntarily. He didn’t know the pattern here. Didn’t know if a direct blow from one of these things would kill him or just hurt like a bitch. Had to sidestep and guess his way through, frustrated by the jerky motion. At least the other solders hung back, still watching, but apparently unwilling to cross the line.

It _must_ have been him. He didn’t move even when Ronan got closer, balanced on his forearms over the pages of a book. And, admittedly, the kind of maniac who would read a book in the middle of a training simulation program did seem like a war-winning hardass.

Shame Ronan had the imagery spoiled by knowing a bunch of stupid simple things that could (and would) very easily kill him.

Ronan got within a few metres and stopped, eyeing the spinning machines warily. No reaction yet, from the man in front of him. Reluctantly, Ronan cleared his throat.

Nothing.

His arms weren’t even twitching from the sustained effort of holding his torso up, but Ronan could see the muscle, uncovered from his shoulder to his hands. He wasn’t wearing a uniform, or shoes. There wasn’t body armour, or any substance to his clothing. Like he’d walked onto the killing floor in nothing but a tank top and cargo pants. There was a pistol tucked into the back of his belt, though. The only aberration in otherwise flawless posture.

Ronan cleared his throat again, louder, and crossed his arms. Goddamn Parrish had sent him here, hadn’t he? At least this time Parrish reacted, head turning just slightly so he could see Ronan’s boots.

‘Parrish.’ Ronan snapped finally. He was too tired of this shit to wait on the Angel’s ego. After all, he was under _orders_.

‘What?’ It was flatter, cooler than Ronan had expected. Parrish lifted himself on his hands, smoothly moved into a crouch and up to his feet, impressively fast. Another set of blades swung past, and Ronan winced. Parrish didn’t seem to notice. ‘What do you _want_?’

His expression was hard, but Ronan thought there was a flash of frustration behind impassivity.

‘ _You_ sent me.’ Ronan retorted defensively. ‘To find you when I woke up.’

There was another flash of emotion, too fast for Ronan to identify it. His voice dropped to a growl, and he took a half-step forward, shoulders tense. ‘ _What_?’

Ronan hesitated. Considered the possibility this would get him a medical discharge, or a broken jaw. ‘Tomorrow.’ He winced again. ‘On the beach. Tomorrow.’

More clashes of metal. Ronan couldn’t glance away long enough to see where it came from, because Parrish was staring at him with… unexpected comprehension. Two more steps forward, and he was examining Ronan like he’d raised the dead (which, in some manner of speaking, he had). Ronan hadn’t noticed the scar, before, the curved line from below his eye across to his ear. Hadn’t noticed that Parrish didn’t seem old enough to be going to France, let alone old enough to lead the charge at Verdun.

Parrish swallowed, examination completed, and muttered; ‘Follow me. Now.’

Engineering division was over to the west of the training arena, and during the walk Ronan gave Parrish the short, colourfully-worded version of the story.

The response was monosyllabic, at best. Parrish was deep in thought, only contributing the occasional murmur as an affirmative or a prompt. He was offensively unfazed by the premise of time-loops.

Engineering was dark, dank, and like every other part of the FOB, loud. Parrish went straight through, uninterrupted, undisturbed, Ronan tagging alongside him. It was different, he appreciated that. It was something new, and it was almost a relief to find his reality so suddenly, wholly accepted.

Parrish strode right up to a figure curved over a blowtorch, tapped him on the shoulder and kept moving.

‘Adam.’ A murmured recrimination, and the new man pushing up welding goggles to glance anxiously at Ronan. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Gansey, meet Lynch.’ Parrish’s tone was low, steady. ‘The new Angel.’

‘Wha-’ Gansey was already scrambling to catch up. ‘Do you mean-?’

‘Yup.’

So that was how Ronan met Gansey.

He was considerably more talkative than Parrish, and extraordinarily more helpful. He explained that Parrish had gone through the same experience, down to some nasty fucker of a mimic with apparently magic powers. Gansey had helped Parrish through it, through Verdun, through everything. Had pinned down the possibility that the mimics had a hierarchy, a central intelligence. A core with the power of retrospective projection, or some shit, called the Omega.

Really, Ronan was still trying to process the fact that he was having a normal human conversation again.

‘What’s the…’ Ronan sighed, rubbed his eyes. Nearly an hour of this, and he’d suddenly remembered that J-Squad would be looking for him. That he was still supposed to be on the front line, tomorrow, that he was still destined to die. That he should probably be trying harder to remember what Gansey was saying, because, fuck, was he going to end up here again? ‘What’s the point… exactly?’

‘I want to win.’ Parrish answered, simply. ‘You’re the only weapon for doing that.’

‘How?’ Ronan scowled at him. ‘No matter how many loops, I’m not gonna be able to kill them all.’

‘Visions.’ Gansey mumbled, cringing. ‘Eventually you’ll get visions that will lead us to the Omega.’

‘Visions.’ Ronan repeated. He rubbed his forehead with a grimace. ‘Fuck.’

The Angel’s power surpassed Ronan’s expectations. He was given an automatic pass - tell Shawcross to contact Pinney, the CO of Parrish’s death squad, with news that the Angel’s parents had sent their love from Henrietta - and Parrish would come to find him.

Ronan didn’t spend much time thinking about that… it didn’t seem polite. Thankfully Shawcross seemed startled enough that he knew about Pinney (or respectful enough of the Angel’s reputation to risk withholding the message) and he was still silently miming the introduction to J-squad word-by-word when Parrish showed up.

Anyone vaguely attentive in the barracks stared at him, every time, including J-squad.

Czerny seemed alarmed by his presence, which was just about the most sensible response. Blue looked unimpressed, but she watched him anyway, warily. The tall girl, who Ronan had learned was Orla, and had equally quickly learned to avoid, gazed in unashamed fascination. Cheng looked politely and curiously entertained.

Shawcross, noticing the interloper a few seconds too late (every time), trailed off.

He nodded with shockingly deferential recognition, and took a moment to recover the power of speech.

‘Lynch.’ He motioned to Ronan, correctly judging the reason for the Angel of Verdun’s abrupt arrival, and with quick, awkward embarrassment, moved to remove the handcuffs.

Parrish looked at Ronan impassively.

It had been a long time since the constant lack of recognition had bothered Ronan. He was used to the strange, conflicting sensation of complete familiarity with a person who found him completely unfamiliar. With Parrish, for the first time in an age, it was impossible to tell he didn’t actually know Ronan.

It was fairly difficult to tell anything about him at all, to be accurate.

They walked outside, and Ronan seethed over the indignity of trotting after the silent Parrish, over the expectation to follow and behave and explain. He had no issue with Parrish being aloof, but he thought it might be beneficial to the so-called Saviour’s ego to discover just how easily he got squashed in battle now that he’d lost his very special unique, one-of-a-kind time-travel wizardry.

‘You needed to talk to me.’ Parrish would prompt eventually. He was always distant, and always waited for Ronan to offer up a description of the time loops before conceding that they see Gansey, or later go straight to training. Something in the coded message about his parents meant he already suspected why Ronan was asking for him… but he was careful.

He was also a bastard, as if Ronan hadn’t already figured that out.

He demanded a sit-rep, first up, every reboot. How many times had Ronan gone around? How many had involved Parrish? How much did he know from Gansey? Had he experienced the visions?

Then there was the training.

 _I’m fighting the fuckers on the beach every single fucking time,_ Ronan had pointed out, snarling.

 _Fighting and losing,_ Parrish answered, unmoved.

He had an afternoon and a night before they got shipped out, and Parrish tortured him through all of it. He argued every time, bitched every time, swore every time, but he couldn’t pretend the prick was wrong. His spells on the beach, though innumerable, rarely lasted long. He was still rough on the trigger, clunky with reloading, slow on turns. He hated the constriction of the suit. He hadn’t mastered the heli-blade, which Parrish insisted he train with for when the ammunition started running out.

Ronan had never considered the possibility of the ammo running out, because he had never made it that far, against that many enemies. He also had trouble swinging the blade hard enough to kill a mimic without losing his balance.

It stole the only time he’d ever had to do nothing. The stretch of time overnight he’d first spent lying awake, sleepless and haunted, and then crashing out in utter exhaustion. It took the only reprieve he had left. He wouldn’t ask Parrish for a break, ever. Mostly because Parrish had no right to deny it to him, and Ronan knew the little shit would anyway. Partly because Parrish still seemed (no, _repeatedly_ seemed) to find him lacking. He gave instructions on the training course, advised modifications to the battle armour. Observed, and adjusted, and observed, and adjusted. And observed, and adjusted, and observed, and adjusted. _Prick_.

Ronan was half-convinced he was making it all up. Just telling Ronan he was doing things wrong regardless of what he did or what he corrected. Ronan wasn’t interested in giving him anything else to criticise.

So he bailed on the training sometimes. Bailed on the UDF, sometimes. Fucked off and slept somewhere else, for the afternoon and the night and the slow, nightmarish crawl of the following day. It was impossible for Parrish to know - Ronan didn’t exactly volunteer the information in the sit-reps - but it often still felt seedy. He imagined that Parrish sighed a little more perceptibly in the next reboot, or that he watched more closely. That he could tell Ronan was slacking, somehow. Wasn’t as committed as Parrish was, to the whole universe-saving bit.

Because Ronan wasn’t. He hadn’t signed up for it, he didn’t want it. He wanted rid of this responsibility, and of Parrish. He wanted his life back, or an end to this cycle of bullshit.

And besides, nobody was as committed as Parrish was. He was singleminded about defeating the mimics, about perfecting Ronan’s technique, about finding the Omega. He was fixated, and controlling, and probably certifiable.

So Ronan slept, and sometimes drank, and occasionally cried.

After some indeterminable number of reboots and sit-reps Parrish had him moved into the death squad. Nobody really seemed to question it, even though the other soldiers in Parrish’s team gave him scathing looks. He’d earned them, he knew, because he looked fresh off the plane every damn time. Everyone else was scarred up and battle-hardened, even Parrish, in spite of the incredible advantage of his own reboots.

Everything changed again, every time. There were new dangers; the ship crashed, the mimics targeted them heavily, Parrish was injured. Ronan tried moving him around the ship to see where he was safest, much to Parrish’s frustration. _But how significant a head wound? How badly burned? What did Ronan mean by maimed?_ Very little slowed him down, but there was plenty that stopped him altogether. Ronan nearly always saw him die, because Parrish was always trying to push forward. Parrish was always trying to find out more.

Once, in training, Ronan got blindsided by the mechanical mimic. Broke his ribs, his arm, possibly his spine. Was lying on the ground waiting for Parrish to come over, and staring at the ceiling, and wondering what the hell kind of brain injury made Parrish ever think they could win.

He’d stood over Ronan with the pistol, emotionless. Waiting.

Ronan wondered what would happen if he didn’t reboot, just this once. He liked to picture Parrish being carted off to a military tribunal for shooting some dumb idiot on a training range… but he doubted it would have happened anyway. Ronan was nobody, and this was the Angel. Last hope.

He sighed, wheezily, tasting blood. ‘I hate you.’

‘I know.’

He thought the visions began after that. Of the dam, and the Omega. Inland, and far. He didn’t know the countryside, but Gansey helped with that. He seemed thrilled that he finally had enough information to be useful, again.

Parrish paced, and Ronan fidgeted. More days had to be given over to planning, to data. Ronan would try to remember enough to kickstart the process, but it was exhausting. He quit more and more frequently. He ran, again and again.

His fighting still wasn’t up to Parrish’s standards. His experience was yet to extend beyond the beach. He struggled to remember the relevant features of Gansey’s plan, for piecing together in subsequent reboots. They didn’t stand a chance, with or without visions. How far could Parrish really believe they’d get?

‘You need to slow down over the crest.’

‘Mm hm.’

‘No, you need to fucking slow down over the crest.’

Parrish looked up at him, irritation barely evident in his features, but Ronan could recognise it now, after so long.

‘I’m not telling you another fucking time.’

‘Is it left or right?’

‘Three steps right.’

‘Directly right?’

‘No.’ Ronan swung the heli-blade, downing a faux mimic in one blow. It didn’t completely alleviate his frustration. ‘Forward and right.’

‘Then say forward and right.’ Parrish’s tone was flat.

Ronan contemplated killing Parrish himself, this time. He rolled his eyes, hefted the blade for another incoming enemy. ‘Fuck you.’

‘You need a vehicle.’

‘Yes.’ Ronan groaned. At least with Gansey, things were more variable. Sometimes, depending on tiny little differences in the things Ronan said, or failed to say, Gansey had different ideas, or different priorities. It was a small relief, but only very small. It sometimes, rarely, but sometimes made this feel less like torture. ‘Yes, and there are different options for finding them beyond the beach. But we haven’t been beyond the beach, yet, so we’re still _fucked_.’

Gansey put a hand on his shoulder, silently, and squeezed.

That was the other thing about Gansey. He wasn’t as much of a dickhead as everyone else, even when Ronan was still a stranger to him.

Parrish backed off on the training. Now, just recounting the previously collected data took up all of Ronan’s afternoon and part of the night. Running Parrish through scenarios, expanding the plan with Gansey (and re-expanding, and etc.), became his routine. It didn’t feel any less arduous, even if it was less physically damaging.

Ronan’s mind was already largely unravelling. Had been for a long time. He thought about Adam’s parents, wherever they were. Dead, probably, to make him show up so promptly to respond to a message they couldn’t have sent. Maybe he didn’t have parents at all. Maybe he was a mimic in sheep’s clothing. Maybe he was a demon, in Ronan’s personal hell. Maybe he was a little figment of Ronan’s imagination.

‘You needed to talk to me.’

The sit-reps, remarkably, had gotten shorter. Ronan knew Parrish saw something in him whenever they met. Most people did, now. Backed off when they made the mistake of looking in his eyes. Ronan could say “Time-loops” and stare Parrish down, and Parrish wouldn’t hesitate before taking him off to see Gansey.

Sometimes, not even that.

‘Why did you enlist?’ He stopped walking, wishing he’d taken this reboot off. He’d taken the last one off, and the one before that, he thought, but… he was still tired. Still burned out. Still… hopeless.

Parrish stopped just in front of him, and turned back. ‘What?’

Ronan just threw his hands up.

There was a pause. Parrish blinked, slowly. Cleared his throat. ‘You might have time for this, but I don’t.’

Ronan stared at him anyway. The caution, in not engaging until Ronan confirmed his suspicions. The knowledge of what it meant if he did. Was it possible that the impatience was resentment, that Ronan would have to save the world this time instead of him? Or was it more likely to be disdain, for Ronan’s odds of being able to save anything, compared to the great and powerful Angel of Verdun?

‘Do you know you’ll die?’ He asked finally. He’d rarely tried to dig the knife in, because Parrish seemed impervious. And because there hadn’t been time. And because he hadn’t cared. ‘Did you see it coming?’

Parrish glanced down, only slightly, before he looked back up. ‘Of course.’ He blinked again, almost innocently. ‘How many times?’

As though it could be something like four, or ten, or fifty.

‘Too many.’

They broke the beach. Finally. With Parrish barely limping and Ronan nursing a few cracked ribs, they actually made it off the sand. After that it felt like dominoes falling. Rapidly, they made progress reboot after reboot. They found the strip mall, and found the working sedan (big enough for the armour, small enough to be fast). They tracked inland, following the roads. Ronan insisted on driving, after the first and only time Parrish got behind the wheel left them trapped upside down in a ditch as mimic-bait.

Parrish would sit in the passenger seat, awkward in his inactivity. His helplessness.

They would take the car until the fuel ran out, and then walk across the fields in a straight line towards the dam. When the armour ran out of battery, they dumped that, too.

They found the sedan again, on a bad reboot, one that left Ronan wanting another few days of sleep.

‘You drive.’ He shoved the keys at Parrish, who took a break from scanning their surroundings just to frown at him.

‘You said you always drove.’ He protested, snatching the keys.

‘Changed my damn mind, get in. And watch the fucking road.’

He hadn’t changed his mind, and after successfully navigating around the potholes and husks of other cars, Parrish looked him over doubtfully. ‘You’re injured.’

‘M’fine.’ He had been, for a while. Thought he’d gotten away with a slightly off-standard manoeuvre with the heli-blade, but there was an undeniable pain in his chest, now. Something that dug a little deeper every breath he took.

‘We should start over.’ Parrish said briskly, raising one arm and levelling his entire machine gun at Ronan’s head.

‘No.’ Ronan pushed his arm away, and leaned against the window pane. ‘There’s more intel up ahead.’

Parrish didn’t look convinced. This was the other thing that he was fixated on, that the mimics would try to bleed Ronan of his powers before he died, and that was why Parrish wanted him dead quickly and cleanly. Ronan had mostly attributed it to Parrish’s own loop-inspired paranoia, but recently the mimic behaviour had been… odd. Recently, in itself, had recently become a bit of a dubious concept.

Either way, Parrish left him alone, and Ronan settled into quiet contemplation of pain, occasionally offering advice on their route and pointing out mimic locations.

Despite the perpetual reboots he had never stopped registering the pain. He still hated it. But it wasn’t frightening, any more. He wasn’t sure he would have been able to continue if it was frightening. It was just… inevitable. And shitty. And necessary.

Things were quiet, deep into the afternoon. They’d have to ditch the car shortly and take to the fields. Not certain fields, which had been their demise last time. New fields.

Ronan’s fingers went numb, at some point. He dozed, his dreams disjointed and desolate. Parrish tried the radio, and they heard part of the emergency broadcast, looped in French, before he calmly switched it off again. He’d escaped the conflict with scratches and bruises, nothing more, and it was a shame this would have to end soon. It wasn’t often Parrish made it this far in such good shape.

The car sputtered and died. Ronan didn’t wait for it to stop rolling before he pushed the door open and let the suit do the work in lifting him out. He ignored the chest pain. Ignored the urge to let his head droop.

‘On the far left, about 200 yards.’ He said grimly, pointing. ‘And beyond that, over there, but closer to the road.’

He’d said it all before they’d left the compound, but it helped to repeat it, here, in the landscape. It helped.

They lost the armour. Parrish, unexpectedly, chose not to detach his machine gun with remaining ammo. Ronan didn’t understand why until his own suit failed minutes later, and he had to lean on Parrish just to walk. His weight didn’t seem to distract Parrish from scanning the horizon, searching for any sign of disturbance in the soil up ahead, and listening to Ronan’s instructions.

Last time they were following satellite imagery towards a farmhouse, hoping to find a working vehicle. This time they attempted a wider detour, cutting southwest towards a small township. Ronan couldn’t be bothered worrying about the probability of a mimic infestation. He was dead either way, and at least now they’d know a third option was necessary.

They could see the first batch of fences, on the outskirts of the town. A few generously spaced houses, either dilapidated themselves or surrounded by heavily neglected gardens.

‘Where now?’ Parrish was breathless, faltering. It wasn’t strategically wise to go into an urban environment, but the distance to their ultimate objective was still too great for them to do anything else.

‘New territory.’ Ronan’s boots dragged in the dirt. He tried to straighten, marginally, and failed.

Parrish didn’t respond, but he moved forward more purposefully, focused. He already knew this would be over soon, so he had nothing to lose, and Ronan had plenty to gain from a direct approach.

Remarkably, the actual township seemed largely deserted, by human and mimic alike. The human inhabitants had long since evacuated, or perished, but the mimics, too, seemed unable to find purchase in the carefully paved streets and stone buildings. They probably preferred sand and dirt, easier to dig into, and spring out from onto the unsuspecting, but Ronan had seen them slice through concrete and metal without much trouble. It was more likely there were just none left, with the majority presumably still hacking apart any survivors of the beach.

‘Wait.’ Parrish stopped, indicated a house up ahead on the right. ‘This place.’

Ronan didn’t argue. There was a considerable hole in the front of the building, about four feet to the side of the door, that exposed the entirety of a living room or something similar. The mimics had definitely gotten inside, at some point, but that was hardly surprising. Ronan could still tell what had provoked Parrish’s interest. The garage, old-fashioned wooden barn-door style, looked relatively untouched, down to the chain looped through the door handles.

They limped through the hole in the wall, and the doorway beyond, into a kitchen covered in a faint coat of dust. The damage in the front room didn’t extend much farther into the house, and there was even a bedroom, almost free of mildew, behind a closed door. Parrish opened the internal garage door with trepidation, but he hadn’t been wrong. There was a little hatchback inside, old but well-maintained. He inspected it briefly, reporting his findings over a shoulder for Ronan to hear where he sat on the floor in the hallway.

Decent tires. Plenty of fuel, coolant, water. The issue could be the battery, but they wouldn’t know until they tried it.

Afterwards he searched the kitchen for the keys, and returned instead with tins of canned tomatoes from the cupboard.

‘Maybe hot-wire it.’ Ronan’s voice was almost gone. He tried to clear his throat, but couldn’t gather the oxygen. The cold, skinless tomatoes called to him, but he couldn’t curl his fingers around the fork Parrish had offered, and he wasn’t sure he’d even be able to swallow.

The pain had become indistinct, now. There was a tangled, impermeable mass of it, cragging up his insides.

Parrish looked at him, and didn’t answer.

Ronan tried to glower at him, and knew he didn’t manage it. ‘Don’t fucking quit. You’re not the asshole who has to do all this again.’

That wasn’t entirely fair. Parrish had to take everything on faith the next time Ronan found him. Parrish had to go in blind. But it wasn’t the same. He hadn’t been here before. He hadn’t been on the beach before, seen Ronan die before, seen humanity collapse before.

Still, there had been Verdun. Verdun must have been Parrish’s own private hell for God knew how long. Ronan assumed Verdun was what had turned him into this, unwavering, unreadable weapon of a human being. He ignored Ronan’s reedy outburst, and ate his tinned food.

‘What does the code mean?’

Parrish glanced at him blankly, which Ronan believed was roughly his equivalent of curiosity.

‘The message about your parents sending their love.’ Ronan tried again. His voice broke. He fidgeted. ‘Why use it?’

The silence stretched on long enough to convince Ronan he wouldn’t get an answer. ‘It would never happen.’ Parrish sounded detached. ‘So I assume I’ve told someone to say it.’

Ronan tried to blink in surprise, and his eyes stayed closed for longer than he intended. ‘Fuck.’

He meant it. At the very least, in all these reboots he knew his brothers were out there. Tucked up in some bunker, Matthew believing Ronan was still at the farm, and Declan cursing his existence. They would have outlasted him, every damn time, and he was grateful for the knowledge that the mimics probably never reached them.

‘Why’d you enlist?’ It wasn’t worth trying to force him to get in the car, and Ronan was struggling to stay awake. He vaguely remembered that he’d asked before, and the answer hadn’t been much more than mild annoyance.

With a faintly concerned expression, Parrish answered; ‘To get away.’ He shrugged, indistinctly. ‘To go anywhere else.’

Ronan made a bleak noise of acknowledgement. Maybe Verdun hadn’t been the only thing that had shaped the Angel into this. And maybe… maybe that was why he’d survived. Kept fighting, and helped them win. Ronan was still here, but he wouldn’t be, without Parrish. He would have given up a long time ago, and settled for alcohol and misery on repeat.

‘You have family.’ Parrish said, and seeming to recognise the ambiguity of his tone, raised his eyebrows.

‘Brothers.’ Ronan answered. He thought he might have mentioned this before, one time or another. Didn’t mind. ‘Older and younger. Bunkered up, somewhere.’

‘Oh.’ Parrish looked around, as if trying to pull notions of normal conversation from their surroundings. ‘What did you do, before?’

‘I…’ Ronan bit the inside of his lip. He could feel something going wrong, slowly, inside. Like a cog suddenly falling out of a mechanism. ‘I farmed.’

‘Oh.’ Parrish repeated. He nodded. ‘You got reclaimed.’

Ronan tried to smirk. There wasn’t any point, telling Parrish things, but it had obviously been decided that they wouldn’t make it any further than this. At least Parrish was pretending to be nice about it, this time, instead of just shooting him in the face.

‘I was studying.’ Parrish continued, softly. ‘At first contact. Molecular biology. Then everyone got pushed to frontline.’

He laid down his fork, thoughtfully. ‘Most of them died, but I think it was still easier for us. People getting drafted after… they were already terrified of what they were facing.’

‘And Verdun?’

Parrish’s expression shuttered. ‘And Verdun.’

Ronan’s vision darkened. He knew Parrish was probably already holding the pistol.

‘Lynch.’ Hesitation.

If he could have, he would have laughed. Parrish was always so acutely aware that Ronan was the one who would remember everything. He never risked doing anything Ronan could throw back in his face later, no matter how much things changed.

There was a hand on his shoulder.

He woke up.


End file.
